Urban Hike: No Sausage, But Blueberries And Frog!

No, we didn't eat the frog. It just happened bounce about amongst the blueberry twigs while I was picking. So I took a picture.

I guess it's best I start from the beginning. The other day, we decided to go to a lake side campfire spot and and torch some sausage, pick blueberries, spy for new mushrooms and have a good healthy dose of fresh air. Many cities here have established campfire or barbeque sites for citizens to use and often the city council provides wood for the fire. As Finnish cities are small and practically next to nature, it's very popular summer pastime, to go hiking and eat in the wild. So we bought sausages, filled water bottles and I prepared some vegetables to roast in the fire: cut them in pieces, add some spices, oil and wrap in tin foil. Then we set out.

Weather wasn't ideal but you cannot always choose. It was good enough (not raining constantly). After stumbling on a work site with explosives (due the map that was not updated properly) we finally found the right path and begun wading through undergrowth, mud and midgies. The path meandered between swamps and forest, and to my delight I saw arctic cloudberries, blueberries and wild strawberries, some of them already ripe.

Arctic cloudberry

Blueberry

Finally we reached the campfire site. It was next to a small lake and heavily populated with insects.
To our dismay, there was no wood to burn. The forest was wet because it had been raining heavily, so no hopes of finding dry wood to burn from there. We sat a while, listened the never-ending "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" of midgies, drank some water and begun our journey back home. After all, you can always roast your sausages in an oven too.

No wood, no fire

On our way back home we picked some blueberries and a few occasional wild strawberries. And got bitten here, there and everywhere. Picking berries is not that hard a job, but trying to stay calm in midst of a cloud of midgies is another thing. Midgies are not dangerous but when there's a plutoon of them trying to land on your fingers and feed on you, it tends to get bit annoying. The bites itch quite a bit. There are many ways to try to avoid them incuding poisons, clothing, ignoring them and staying inside. The most hardy people up north, where midgies are weather (not insects), say that you should just ignore them and get about on your business. Your body will adapt to the bites, and them and bites bother you less. I guess I've been away long enough to become soft and squealy. Midgies are one reason why I rather pick mushrooms, or rather their absence. In the autumn, midgies are gone for the most part, and it's more calm in the forest. Excluding of course, an occasional bear or wolf. (just kidding, it's quite rare to run into those two in the wilderness, they tend to avoid people)

That's a midgie bite. Luckily I am not as juicy as my friend.

When we got back home, we stuffed vegetables and sausages in the oven. It was good but I do miss proper fire burned sausage. Not often but it belongs to summer fun. Traditionally, mustard goes with sausage. I especially like dijon with honey, though I am not a big fan of mustard. Finnish mustard that is know as the Finnish mustard, is Turun sinappi, though it's not manufactured in Finland anymore but in Poland. Ah well, that's the global market for you.

That's all folks! I have a lot going on in my life the following few weeks so I might post a little more infrequently but I'll be around. Have a nice weekend everyone!

And here's what we did with the blueberries - ice cream with bluberries and cherry sabayon

Saucisse, Dumplings and More!

Saucisse (raw sausage) is often used in soups in Finland. It usually divides opinions, some like it and some hate it. For me it works even in ramen! This is a specialty I came up with on my own. I quess it was because Finnish sausages are so plain and I wanted to add more taste and colour to them. Additionally, saucisse is quite high up with fat, so adding vegetables introduces a more healthy aspect to them. And they taste better, too!

Saucisse Dumplings

For these you need 1 kilograms of (plain) raw sausage, 2 largish carrots, 2 onions, 2 garlic cloves and 5 cm long piece of parsnip. Roughly, you should have vegetables 1/4 - 1/3 of the amount of raw sausage. To spice it up you need black pepper and fresh parsley.
Begin by peeling veggies, grate carrot and parsnip. Dice garlic and onion very thinly (because big pieces stick out of the dough and make the dumplings fragile).

Heat up a frying pan and put in some olive oil. Put garlic and onion in first, saute lightly and add the rest of the veggies. Let them heat up but do not fry them, in other words, saute them so that they became soft and loose some water but do not allow them get brown. Put the softened vegetables in a bowl and let them cool a bit. Then squeeze raw sausage out of the skin to the bowl and mix thoroughly.

Put a very large kettle of water to boil. I usually use my pasta kettle but anything big will do. Cover with a lid and start making the saucisse dumplings. It helps to have cold water running (or in a bowl) for dipping hands when the dough starts feeling sticky (same trick with regular meat balls). Place the dumplings next to the kettle and when the water starts to boil put them in. Beware splashes of hot water! First the dumplings will sink but they rise to the surface of water when they are ready. You can check that they are ready by picking one up and halving it.

They are great with pasta or potato, for sauce you can use (for instance) yoghurt with garlic or a plain tomato sauce. Here's a recipe to my very simple tomato sauce.

2 onions (and garlic, if you like)
10 cm piece of celery
(a small piece of yellow bell pepper)
a small cart of crushed tomatos
Black pepper, salt and 1 tsp sugar

Dice onions and celery stick. Heat oil in a pan and saute onions, add vegetables and let them become slightly softer. Add tomato and let simmer. Put in the spices, mix and let simmer some more. Ready!

You can make a smaller batch or freeze them, though freezing doesnt really compliment their taste. When Im making this dish at my mom's, I dont have to worry about how to freeze or use them later on; they tend to disappear from the fridge overnight!